Sad day tomorrow
My aunt's funeral is tomorrow at 2. She's not biologically my aunt; she's the wife of my father's lifelong best friend. She was a high school friend of my mom. They lost touch, and then ran into each other on the bus one day. Fredi (my aunt) got the idea to set her old friend and her new husband's best friend on a blind date. Obviously it worked out.
She took a bad fall the day before Thanksgiving. She's very large, and she'd had problems with her back and legs for a long time. She refused to go for the tests (MRI, in particular), so when she fell she broke a number of vertebrae. While she was in the hospital they tried to do the MRI, but she was in so much pain she couldn't make it through a single time, even when they sedated her. Eventually the realized she had some kind of cancer. They still aren't sure what kind; multiple myeloma seems to be their best guess.
After a couple of weeks they transferred her to a rehab, but she was getting worse and worse. She could barely move, and her mental acuity seemed to go in and out. Sometimes she made perfect sense, other times she was completely out of it. Since her husband Eddie is distracted on a good day, all the medical decisions fell to their son, Jeff, who lives in Virginia. He has health problems of his own. He's been texting me constantly, and I've been trying to reassure him.
Finally, last weekend she was transferred to the hospice section of the hospital, where she fell into a coma. Dad and I went to visit her Wednesday morning. That afternoon she died. With Ed being such a mess, and their son not being able to get here until this morning, Dad has been trying to arrange the funeral. Ed's so out of it, though, that when they went to the funeral home this afternoon, he forgot to bring his checkbook to pay for the whole thing. (29,000 dollars, can you believe it?)
So everything's all set, the service is at 2, but well get there earlier for the sitting. I'm glad she's at peace, but this whole situation has left me completely depressed. Not only for the loss of my aunt, but because so much of the situation takes me back to my mother's illness and death. It'll be ten years since she passed, this February.
She took a bad fall the day before Thanksgiving. She's very large, and she'd had problems with her back and legs for a long time. She refused to go for the tests (MRI, in particular), so when she fell she broke a number of vertebrae. While she was in the hospital they tried to do the MRI, but she was in so much pain she couldn't make it through a single time, even when they sedated her. Eventually the realized she had some kind of cancer. They still aren't sure what kind; multiple myeloma seems to be their best guess.
After a couple of weeks they transferred her to a rehab, but she was getting worse and worse. She could barely move, and her mental acuity seemed to go in and out. Sometimes she made perfect sense, other times she was completely out of it. Since her husband Eddie is distracted on a good day, all the medical decisions fell to their son, Jeff, who lives in Virginia. He has health problems of his own. He's been texting me constantly, and I've been trying to reassure him.
Finally, last weekend she was transferred to the hospice section of the hospital, where she fell into a coma. Dad and I went to visit her Wednesday morning. That afternoon she died. With Ed being such a mess, and their son not being able to get here until this morning, Dad has been trying to arrange the funeral. Ed's so out of it, though, that when they went to the funeral home this afternoon, he forgot to bring his checkbook to pay for the whole thing. (29,000 dollars, can you believe it?)
So everything's all set, the service is at 2, but well get there earlier for the sitting. I'm glad she's at peace, but this whole situation has left me completely depressed. Not only for the loss of my aunt, but because so much of the situation takes me back to my mother's illness and death. It'll be ten years since she passed, this February.